The following document contains some details from the United States Department of Justice case against Daimler AG, dated 22 March 2010.

Bribes to Russian officials went to Latvian bank accounts.

Shortly after the announcement of the Daimler settlement came an announcement that HP also paid bribes to Russian officials through a Latvian bank. Those bribes were paid to the Russian Prosecutors Office.

This document from the United States Department of Justice indicates that a company paid bribes to Riga City politicians to sell buses in 2000.

The accusation must refer to the sale of buses from Solaris of Poland to Riga Transportation (formerly Imanta and Talava). The sale was financed by Parex Bank.

Nobody has been prosecuted. The names “Solaris” and “Parex” have been censored from all Latvian media articles on the subject. And, Solaris continues to sell buses to Riga now in 2012.

Interestingly, the Latvian media did determine that former Riga mayor Gundars Bojars must have been involved. Bojars’ involvement is not surprising since he was also involved in the notorious “Baltic Kristina” deal with Parex. Nobody was prosecuted in that case, either.

Bojars is currently free and rich. He is cooperating with Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg to construct a new building for the Latvian State Revenue Service.

It is a great mystery why nobody in Latvia (new managers at Parex Bank, auditors at Ernst & Young and PWC, raters at Moodys and Fitch, Latvian regulators, Latvian law enforcement, etc.) is able to prove that Parex Bank committed a material fraud crime when financing the sale of buses from Solaris of Poland to Riga Transportation since the proof only takes a few minutes using numbers from Parex Bank and Riga Transportation annual reports.

This bus sale included kickbacks, according to the United States Department of Justice.

This is an email written by John Christmas explaining the proof.

Most likely, this loan is now owned by Parex’s so-called “good bank” successor – Citadele Bank. Obviously, Riga Transportation has no legal obligation to repay this loan and therefore Citadele should announce a 100% loss.

ReportingProject.net has well-researched articles about the fraud and money laundering industry in Latvia. The articles include information that does not appear in Latvian newspapers. Here is a quote from an article about Parex Bank:

“According to representatives of post-nationalized Parex Bank, Burwell was director of companies that received loans from Parex before nationalisation that the bank now suspects were hidden loans to the former shareholders Kargins and Krasovickis.”

Rebaltica.lv contains information about the Latvian money-laundering industry. The website is a welcome source of true information coming from a country where most of the media is controlled by oligarchs and used to disseminate propaganda.

The money-laundering industry got started in Latvia immediately after “independence” when KGB agent Grigory Loutchansky and Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin used Latvian banks to skim billions of dollars from Gazprom.

Over the years, Latvian banks have faced limited sanctions from the United States and Russia. However, these sanctions were not enough and the money-laundering industry continues to thrive in Latvia.

The biggest losers? The Latvian people themselves since the Latvian government has been thoroughly corrupted and looted by the money-laundering banks.